Novelist Tim Parks contemplates the personal questions writers get from the readers who gather to hear them speak:
“Do you think your move to Italy altered the way you think and write?”
“Has it been useful for you as an author to translate as well?”
“Does your wife read your books and if so what does she think of them?”
None of these questions are directly addressed to the novel you are presenting. Yet one has to grant that if only one knew the answers, something would be learned. … Who are you, to be producing this stuff? That’s what they’re asking. The irony perhaps is that what’s mysterious to them is even more mysterious to you. Yet even as you try and inevitably fail to answer their questions you are probably telling them more, in your perplexity and frustration, or your wryness and charm, than you ever could have by explaining your book.
The Dish 